


in thunder, lightning, or in rain

by tossrien



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter, F/M, Fem!Frodo, Female Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Freya Baggins, Freya is Harry, belladonna baggins - Freeform, fem!Bilbo, not being even a little subtle about that 'kay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:42:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3151019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tossrien/pseuds/tossrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freya Baggins receives her Hogwarts letter on the twenty-second of September. While she can't wait to discover a world she'd never known existed, her beloved auntie isn't quite as excited about returning to what she'd left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in thunder, lightning, or in rain

Though Bell had known the day would be coming, and soon, on the morning of September 22, the arrival of the owl is still a surprise.

It takes a long few conversations, and no few demonstrations, for Freya to believe the truth, that she is indeed a witch, much less that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is no joke, and that she’ll actually be attending it in a month’s time. Bell has to swear her to secrecy on multiple occasions, so long conditioned to keeping her magic a secret that she finds herself inordinately frightened and wary of doing any magic at all.

It’s been ten years since they’d gone into hiding, and her wand has spent the last three shut in her bedroom drawer. It’s been so long that it feels strange to get it out again. They’ve been hidden for so long amongst the muggles, hidden in a way no wizard would ever suspect simply because they would not imagine that one of their own, a pureblooded witch of no little magical heritage, no less, could possibly give up magic completely and live the life of a muggle. Driving a car, using a dishwasher, scrubbing her floors by hand. Perhaps she couldn’t have imagined it either, but ten years ago her paranoia had been such that she’d taken Freya and fled.

Bloody You-Know-Who might have been dead, but his followers were not, not nearly enough of them, anyway, and she’d had an orphaned niece to protect. They’d left the magical community behind and settled in an entirely muggle village in the midst of the Shire, and Bell had promptly done her best to become as ordinary a muggle as possible, to the point of never telling Freya about her heritage, though… she’d never made it a secret that Prim and Drogo had been murdered. That, she would not lie about.

Freya is shocked and ecstatic about it all, and Bell manages to hold out for nearly the full year before she knows they’ll need to go to London and purchase Freya’s school things. It’s far too short a year, in the end, with the knowledge that at the close of August she’ll have to send her little girl off to school on her own, and she’ll be left to her own devices, puttering about the cottage and bored out of her bloody mind. She supposes she could go back to Bag End, now, though she can’t imagine what her cousin Lobelia will have to say about that.

Despite her fears and her misgivings, September 1st of the following year approaches despite Bell’s wishes for it to take its time, and Freya’s excitement about it all is such that the only reason she manages to hold out on the shopping is because Bella had concealed the existence of Diagon Alley from her until just before their jaunt to London.. They take the train from Gloucestershire and walk down to the Leaky Cauldron, which is, in a bit of excellent planning on the part of the Ministry of Magic, just a block from King’s Cross. Freya seems unable to take everything in as they step inside, her first entrance into the world that should by rights have been hers from birth. Now, though, she looks like just another muggleborn, wide-eyed and gaping at all of the older folks in their robes. Bell gets a few surprised glances, but no one pays much attention to them at all, Freya’s fringe hiding the lightning bolt scar on her forehead and Bell dressed more than a bit like a frumpy housewife.

Well. She is a frumpy housewife now, no two ways about it. At least she’d taken off the floured apron, though there is absolutely no way her hips will fit into the sleek trousers and leather jackets of ten years before, not unless she shrunk to half her size. No longer a sleek, fashionable young witch is she; it’s no wonder no one recognizes her. She’s become that at which she had always scoffed when she’d been young and foolish: a plump, frizzy-haired mum in ill-fitting clothes.

She looks down at Freya, bright-eyed and young and perfect, and smiles. She’d not have it any other way, because they are alive and well, and that’s what’s important; it’s not as though Bella is about to go off on a midlife crisis now that she’ll have an empty nest for nine months of the year. She just… she can’t imagine what it will be like, now, Freya off to school and leaving her poor old auntie behind.

Well, no matter. She won’t be off to school at all if they don’t fetch her school things, will she?

Promising that they’ll stop for dinner and a butterbeer after their shopping, Bell leads Freya through to the alleyway behind and pulls out her wand. Despite all the simple spells she’s shown Freya over the last month, she’s still not used to carrying it anymore, and it’s an odd warmth in her hand as her fingers brush over the runes carved into the ebony surface. She touches the bricks in quick succession, and puts a hand on Freya’s shoulder as they sweep back to reveal the archway, Diagon Alley stretching out before them.

They’ve the whole day to spend shopping and so she lets Freya take her time, staring at the brooms and robes and owls in the windows and meandering their way down the lane until they reach Gringotts in all its oddly-angled glory.

“Gringotts Bank,” she says to Freya as they make their way up the wide steps. “It’s run by goblins, who are exceedingly excellent with money. There is no safer place in England, except perhaps Hogwarts.”

“Goblins?” Freya echoes, her blue eyes wide. Somehow they do manage to grow even wider as the two of them step into the main hall, with the goblins behind their high desks assisting various human witches and wizards. “But we have money.”

“We have muggle money,” Bell corrects, stepping up to a goblin at a free kiosk. “We’re going to change it for Wizarding money. Galleons and sickles and knuts, remember? And we’re going to get a bit from your vault for your school things.”

“My vault?” Freya says, eyes so wide as to be round. Bell smiles down at her and takes out her wallet, turning to the goblin, who is waiting more or less patiently for her, although she’s never actually met a friendly goblin here, only polite ones. Considering their history with the Ministry of Magic, she can’t really blame them.

“Hello, yes, I’d like to exchange these, please. And my niece would like to make a withdrawal from her vault.”

The goblin carefully counts out her money for her, and she replaces it in her wallet. “Name?” he asks, pulling out a ledger.

“Freya Baggins,” Bell says firmly. The goblin looks up at her slowly, his eyes fixed on her face for a moment before ticking down to look at Freya.

“Very well,” he says, pointing to the far end of the hall. “Please wait. You will be escorted.”

They troop down to the end of the long, high-ceilinged room, and Freya tries to stare at everything, as she has since they’d first arrived in Diagon Alley. It’s exhausting, but she can’t possibly stop- there’s so much to see, and it feels like it’s all a dream. She’s so distracted that she entirely misses Auntie’s tension, so busy trying to look at everything she can that it’s only Auntie’s hand on her shoulder that gets her where they need to go.

She’s a witch. She belongs here. It’s unbelievable.

At the end of the hall, a small group of people are already waiting. Two boys who look to be near her own age (though significantly taller, as everyone always is), one with sandy blond hair and one dark, stand with a tall, broad man. She stares at them from behind, aware that this is the closest she’s ever been to other wizards, watching from the polite distance they’re standing away as the dark haired one pokes the blond one, and it quickly dissolves into a tussle the way Merry and Pippin always do. The tall man growls something at them in a deep voice, the words unfamiliar, and Freya peers up at him. All she can see from behind is that he is very tall, with thick dark hair in a long mane down over his shoulders.

Her aunt, however, has gotten notably tense, her grip tightening on Freya’s shoulder so that it almost hurts, and Freya flinches a bit, trying to tug away. “Auntie!”

“Sorry, darling,” Auntie says in a quiet, strained voice. The tall man spins around in front of them, his eyes wide as he stares at Auntie. This seems like an oddly exaggerated reaction to Freya, but Auntie’s tension has not abated, and as Freya blinks up at her, Auntie turns completely red. “Hello, Thorin.”

“Bell,” he says hoarsely, his eyes as wide as Freya’s have been for an hour.

The two boys are staring with interest at the adults, and then at her, and Freya flushes a little, looking up at Auntie and the aforementioned Thorin, who looks down at her, shock still written on his face. “So this is-“

“Freya,” Auntie interrupts, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly. “Freya Baggins, this is Thorin Thrainson, an- an old friend of mine.”

He reaches back to gesture for the two boys to come forward, and they do, eyeing Freya with more interest than she’d expected, the smaller one’s brown eyes wide. “And these are my nephews, Fili and Kili.”

“Nephews,” Auntie echoes, an odd note in her voice.

Thorin’s sounds similar when he says, “Yes, Dis’ boys.“

“I remember. It’s lovely to see you two- you’ve grown up so handsomely.”

They both scuff their feet against the floor at that, and Freya would very much like to know why the three of them, both the boys and their uncle, keep staring at her.

Bell, on the other hand, can’t do much but try not to stare at Thorin. He looks… well, good would be an understatement. He’d always been tall, easily a head taller than she, but now he’s filled out, his shoulders almost impossibly wide. His beard has filled in, too, as dark as his hair and trimmed short and neat. In his deep blue robes, he looks wealthy and fashionable, even if Bell is clueless as to what might be in style now. He looks like a million bucks, to borrow the muggle phrase, and she feels impossibly frumpy in comparison in her jeans and her baggy sweater and old cloak.

“Here we are,” she says uncomfortably as a goblin appears to escort them to the carts; her hopes for leaving Thorin and his nephews behind are dashed when the goblin gestures for them all to follow him into the sole cart waiting on the tracks. Bell finds herself squished into the back between Thorin and Freya as the two boys claim the front seat, and Thorin’s thigh is a line of hard muscle against hers as they’re thrown from side to side by the roller coaster of a cart. To her left, Freya is laughing uproariously, still an adrenaline junkie as she’s always been, and Bell keeps an arm around her shoulders, trying not to lean too heavily into Thorin as they careen around a tight turn. She can’t help it, though, centripetal force being what it is, and she slams against his arm with a small grunt. He steadies her, though, his hand white-hot even through all of her layers, and she’s unbearably relieved when they screech to a stop at the first vault.

The rest of the ride doesn’t go much better, and never has she been happier to exit Gringotts than she is that day. “It was so lovely to see you- I’m afraid we’re off to do our shopping-“

“Bell, please wait,” Thorin says quickly, taking her arm, but the elder of his nephews interrupts, looking excited.

“We’re going to buy Kili’s wand- d’you want to come along? Have you got yours yet?” he asks Freya. She shakes her head shyly and looks up at Bell.

“Auntie, can we go with them?”

“May we,” Bell corrects distractedly. The boys send her pleading looks, and she glances up at Thorin, who is still holding onto her arm. She sighs. “Yes, all right.”

All three children cheer, the blond one- Fili- reaching over to take Freya’s hand and tugging her in the direction of Ollivander's. Bell looks up at Thorin, who releases her arm but offers his, and she sighs again, tucking her hand into it. They follow at a more sedate pace.

“I didn’t know what happened to you,” he says gruffly, looking straight ahead. “All Gandalf would ever say was that you were safe. I didn’t even think you were still in Britain.”

“We’ve been living in a muggle village,” she admits, glancing up at him and seeing his stony expression. “I had my name removed from the owl post. I was-“ Someone brushes past them with a polite apology, another mother with two teenaged witches, and Bell clears her throat, pausing for a second before continuing. “I was afraid of reprisals, after what happened to Prim and Drogo. I needed to make sure Freya was safe. We’ve lived as muggles for ten years, until her letter arrived.”

“You could have said.” Thorin’s voice is as stony as his expression, and this time, Bell does look up at him, turning to face him as they stop in front of Ollivander's. “Any contact, any word at all. I’ve half-thought you dead. Ten years, Bell. Would you even have sent word now, if we hadn’t seen you here today?”

“I was under the impression that you did not wish to see me again at all,” Bell growls back, managing to keep her voice low. Passersby are sending them curious glances, standing as they are in the midst of the alley in a clear disagreement. “I had to keep my family safe, the last bit of it that I had left. You of all people should understand that.”

He hears the accusation in her words, as she’d meant him to, and his back stiffens. “Your friends have worried for you.”

“Gandalf sent about the word that I was safe abroad.”

“I would have preferred to hear it from you.”

“Would you, now?” Bell’s expression is tight and unhappy. “You could have fooled me.”

“One foolish disagreement does not negate all of the years-“

Her eyes have widened in fury.  She hisses, “ _Foolish!_ One foolish disagreement?!”

His jaw tightens. “I knew you would come to your senses eventually, and so I was merely giving you space, and then you disappeared into thin air!”

Bell cannot manage to do more than echo his words, she’s in such shock. “You knew I would _come to my senses?!_ ”

“Clearly you have not.”

“Well, clearly not, you arrogant, pompous, _domineering_ -“

“Oh, _I’m_ the arrogant one? Have you met yourself, you stubborn shrew-“

“You are a git, that’s what you are, assuming that I’d just acquiesce to what you wanted if you gave me long enough to think it over-“

“As though you weren’t just waiting for me to come around to your way of thinking- you knew I would be obliged to-“

“Yes, because an _obligation_ was exactly what-“

“ _I never said_ -“

“God forbid you ever learn to compromise!”

“AUNTIE!”

“UNCLE THORIN!”

They both freeze, turning to look down at their respective niece and nephews, all three of whom are staring up at them, bemused and nervous. Bell looks back up at Thorin, who is nearly nose to nose with her, and realizes belatedly that she’d been hissing her half of the argument up at him, barely a hairsbreadth from giving in to the urge to screech at him in public.

He stares down at her, too, and finally clears his throat, taking a step back. She does, as well, about to usher Freya into the shop, but Freya brandishes a wand made from some sort of dark wood; next to her, Kili has one, as well. Guilt floods her, and she swallows, managing a strained smile. “I’m so sorry I missed it. It’s quite lovely.”

Thorin squeezes Kili’s shoulder, murmuring something in _khazad_ that makes his nephew light up, and then he turns to look at Bell again, his face tight. “We should be getting on.”

“As should we,” Bell says stiffly. “Wonderful to see you, of course.”

“Of course.” Thorin’s expression softens as he looks down at Freya. “Best of luck in your first year, Miss Baggins.”

“Thank you,” Freya says, reverting back to shyness after seeing him so angry at her auntie.

“And have a wonderful year, boys. I’m sure you’ll all see one another at Hogwarts.” Bell wraps an arm around Freya’s shoulders and turns her in the direction of Flourish and Blotts with a nod to Thorin. “Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” he says curtly, turning on his heel and striding off, his nephews scampering after him.

The rest of shopping seems to take forever to Bell, and frustratingly, she spots Thorin and the boys several more times that day, although she and Thorin don’t acknowledge one another again. She’s still furious but doing her best to hide it by the time they return home; they’ll have a few days to themselves before she has to take Freya to Platform 9 ¾, and she means to make the most of it...

Which she nearly does, would have if not for that infuriating man. She refuses to let a stupid argument ruin her last few days with Freya before term starts, but angry thoughts of Thorin invade her mind anyway, although finally they do ease into regret at losing her temper so quickly. Perhaps if they’d had a more civil conversation, on both sides… well. She doesn’t know. Bloody man.

 

 


End file.
